


spark like empty lighters

by syzygetic



Category: Great Men Academy สุภาพบุรุษสุดที่เลิฟ (TV)
Genre: Bad vibes, Canon Compliant, Emotionally Repressed, Haircuts, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kissing, Multi, Pre-Canon, Unreliable Narrator, Vier's Problems, Wound Tending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29033892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syzygetic/pseuds/syzygetic
Summary: What Sean wants seems clear enough. It’s what Vier wants, that, as always, feels muddled.Vier tries to work through what it's like to have feelings for someone again after Rose. It gets confusing.
Relationships: Vier/Sean (Great Men Academy)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 8





	spark like empty lighters

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the bad time Vier is having in this. I am already working on a postcanon thing for him where he gets to experience the joy of self actualization. I just also needed to dig into his brain brambles a bit first. The show doesn't tell us much about how his emotion block works, or how it affects how he sees Sean, so I wanted to work out one way things could've gone down.
> 
> The multi tag is because Vier thinks it is m/m but it is. Not that. 
> 
> The self harm tag is for Vier's unhealthy relationship with exercise (this fic does not go into deep detail about it) and with romance (this fic goes deeply into detail about this one).

Vier sits on the bleachers and looks at his hands where they rest in his lap, palms up. He’d just finished his daily uchikomi, and they’re raw from the training band. His right hand is a little worse than the left. He flexes it--a test--and sucks in a breath at the sting. It hurts. 

_It could hurt more, if I wanted it to._

He thinks it before he can stop himself. He wants to blink the thought away, but his eyes feel stuck on his palms. He hadn’t even noticed it happening until he was done with the workout. Vier remembers the first time he almost passed out after a run, and the boundary of how much his body can take flickers in his mind, mocking him with its nearness. His guts twist. The control he has over himself feels more tenuous than ever. He can’t trust himself to entertain thoughts like this.

Vier closes his eyes and tries to breathe, tries to center himself. He hones his focus on why he’s doing Judo to begin with: running had started being more of a hurt than a help, the way he was doing it after Rose had...after all that. And then he started reading Kotaro, and the idea of Judo had felt like a life raft. A new way he could excel, but without the baggage of having pushed himself too far in his previous sport. He needs to keep it that way. He _has_ to, because he needs a physical education component for his cumulative score or he won’t make it to The Greatest competition again. He breathes in again, holding that thought in his mind. He can’t look inward any further, or else he’d have to detangle whether he wants his dad to be proud of or disappointed by his change in athletic direction. 

“Is my old Mentor working too hard again?”

Vier turns his head toward the voice and opens his eyes. He balls his hands into fists, hiding his palms like they were something he’d stolen. Sean is walking toward him, looking put together even in his school sweats and gym bag. Vier swallows. 

“Just training. Or, um, just finishing training.”

Sean sits down next to him, tsking. He pulls Vier’s arms out from where he’d crossed them against his chest with gentle pressure on his wrists. Barely a grasp. Vier relaxes his fists. It’s not anything huge and vulnerable to let Sean see, he rationalizes. Sean, even in this short amount of time since they’ve gotten close, has a weird way of being able to circle close to the parts of Vier he’d ordinarily keep hidden. There’s no point in dragging it out if he’s already noticed.

Sean’s question sits in the arch of his eyebrow.

Vier shrugs, willing the situation to be deserving of one. “Got a little carried away. It happens.”

Sean tilts his head back, narrowing his eyes at Vier. He doesn’t embarrass him by saying anything more about it, though. He just sighs and pulls a tidy first aid kit out of his bag. Vier keeps his hands open in acquiescence, and Sean wordlessly gets to work cleaning the wound. 

Vier doesn’t want to look at his hands. He doesn’t want to think about the sharp, clean sting of the medicine Sean is dabbing softly on his abraded skin. He shifts his gaze to Sean’s face. His mouth is pursed; a heart-shaped pout of concentration. Vier looks instead at the tree behind him. Even safer. He tries not to notice Sean’s quiet smirk. 

A lot of their interactions are like that; politely and mutually agreeing to not comment on the energy between them. It’s been like this from the beginning. Their first meeting is still so clear in Vier’s memory: Sean walking up to him, chin high, looking Vier up and down like he could eat him whole if he wanted, and saying “I think you know my sister?” Vier remembers how he had nodded, a practiced, even smile on his face like it was a perfectly normal way to introduce yourself to someone. 

The part where Sean was into him wasn’t the surprise. Vier is a celebrity, after all. It’s not like he doesn’t have experience with people, whatever their gender, flirting with him on sight. But that’s different. It doesn’t feel real, since they don’t know him. Their attraction is wrong, based on someone they built in their minds. The surprise was that Sean DID know something about the real him, from Rose, and looked at him that way anyway. And it’s only gotten more intense since then, once they actually started becoming friendly.

Sean wraps a bandage around Vier’s right hand, tucking it deftly against itself. 

“Your hands are too handsome to ruin like this.”

Vier still doesn’t want to look at them. He glances, instead, at Sean’s hands. He has long delicate fingers; bony wrists. “It’s not like palms show up in photoshoots,” he says.

“Well then,” Sean counters, “if not for all your fans, at least think of the Judo.” 

Vier risks a flick of his eyes back at Sean and allows himself a smile when he confirms, by the wry curve of Sean’s mouth, that he’s joking, “Yeah, I guess I do need them for that.”

“ _And_ for the basketball pointers you promised to give me this weekend,” Sean chides. “You need them for that, too.”

“Ah, right.” He’d not forgotten, he just wasn’t thinking about anything like that when he was training; only the ache in his shoulder muscles, the bright blue of the sky, and the solid weight of the tree his training band was tied to keeping him from falling into it. “I’ll make it up to you as soon as they’re healed.”

“I’ll hold you to it.” Sean’s earring reflects the midafternoon sun, painting his jaw in a bright starburst. It’s beautiful. Vier feels nothing.

There’s something about Sean that makes Vier think he might be going crazy. Like there’s a ghost of a feeling he wants to have, but can’t quite name. Or, can’t quite bring himself to name. Because he knows, in a back corner of his brain, that he _could_ , if he wanted to. But it feels more complicated than just admitting he’s attracted to a guy, and that’s the part that freaks him out. He wants to dig into it, figure it out so he can excise it from his heart, but it’s like his whole brain turns to static nothingness if he gets too close to understanding it. It’s not the kind of easy, unremarkable nothing he feels about someone he’s not romantically interested in. It’s not a regular nothing. It’s a nothing that makes him feel like he’s running circles around a black hole. 

“So we’re settled. Let them heal before you go training like that again, okay?”

Vier juts his chin up in agreement, then turns away. His hair slides out from behind his ear and falls in his face.

Sean tsks again, saying “And your hair is getting long, too.” He reaches over and runs his fingers through it, pushing it back into its signature coif. Vier lets him, like it’s normal. 

“Oh. It’s. Uh. Been a while since I got it cut. I didn’t like how the last hairdresser did it.” He pauses for a moment, then relaxes the muscle he realizes he’s clenching in his jaw, schooling his expression into something casual. “Rose used to cut it for me.”

“I know.” Sean says. “I could do it if you want. She taught me.”

The Greatest competition is in two weeks. He should really leave it for the stylist he’s assigned to there, he thinks. 

“Sure,” Vier says, and smiles with his mouth and not his eyes, answering before he can think any more about it. “You keep scissors in your backpack, too?

“No, they’re back in my dorm room.” Sean says, and then stops to huff his quiet laugh when Vier’s eyes widen. “Don’t worry, my roommate went home for the weekend, so he won’t bother you for an autograph. Come up after dinner?”

This doesn’t do anything to make Vier any less worried about the prospect of spending time alone with Sean in his room, but he makes a low hum of assent nonetheless.

“Good,” says Sean, closing the little clasp of his first aid pouch and dropping it in his backpack. He stands up. “See you then. And try not to get your bandages too wet when you shower, or else I’ll have to redo them.”

Vier nods and watches Sean walk out of sight, bag slung over one shoulder.

~~~~~

Vier waits a bit after dinner before he heads over to Sean’s room. He tells himself he’ll go as soon as Tangmo leaves for some gaming tournament he’s doing with the 3rd years in the lounge. It’s an arbitrary enough condition, but he needs some time to think. 

He sits on his bed and pretends to read, listening to Tangmo whistle as he putters around getting ready. It’s a comforting background track to his jumbled mess of thoughts, since he has to circle around the thing that’s bothering him for a while before he lets himself land on it. 

What Sean wants seems clear enough. It’s what Vier wants, that, as always, feels muddled. This is the thing that’s been eating at him recently--the idea of wanting anything concrete feels so impossible. He doesn’t even know what he’d ask from the unicorn a second time. He just knows he has to get there. The wanting, the wish itself, feels secondary to the act of winning. _That_ is not negotiable. 

It would have been easier, he thinks, if he had never noticed the way Sean looks at him, lip caught in his teeth. If he’d not thought twice about how he presses his hand to the small of Vier’s back when he passes by him. That would make it easier to let himself walk blindly to Sean’s room, now, and let whatever was going to happen to him...happen.

But he _has_ noticed, and that means, surely, that he has to figure out what he wants to do about it. So then he is back to the problem of wanting. 

With Rose, he had wanted everything, all the time, right away. An emotional, physical, and mental connection all dialed up to full volume. He’d thought that all attraction would be like that--a beautiful, terrifying rush. But this one isn’t. It’s like he can allow himself to acknowledge the attraction, but examining his feelings any further scoots his brain closer to that void. 

There is enough overlap in his feelings for both of them, though, to make Vier feel guilty. Rose is Sean’s sister, which feels like it should be betrayal in and of itself. But Rose had been weirdly encouraging when she had texted him to ask how befriending Sean was going. She had used a winky face line sticker and everything, like she knew and didn’t mind. Vier doesn’t know what to do with what feels like the beginning of real friendship with Rose after so long not speaking, or with the physical chemistry he feels with Sean, because both of those things are undeniably there. There’s just still something that feels off--that nothingness that engulfs him when he gets too close to feeling something for Sean. He is afraid, if he lets himself actually put words to it, that he went too far with his first wish. That the unicorn took away his ability to love anyone, and not just her. 

Or, he reasons with himself, maybe that’s not true, and he just hasn’t proved it wrong because he doesn’t spend a lot of time around girls anymore. Maybe there isn’t anyone else he can test it on, and Sean isn’t any harbinger of Vier’s bisexuality and inability to love. Just a fluke. It’s not like he’s ever felt anything for any other guy--

“Don’t hurt yourself, farang.” Tangmo’s voice, right by his ear, yanks him out of that particular dissembling spiral. 

Tangmo must see the confusion and panic in Vier’s face, because he continues, tapping the top of Vier’s head. “Thinking too hard, I mean. You looked like you were gonna pass out. Can I leave you like this? Tournament’s about to start.”

Relief floods through Vier. He’s not sure what he was afraid of Tangmo guessing from his face, but the moment has passed before he has to worry about it. “Ah, ah yeah I’m good. Go on, kick their asses.”

Tangmo ruffles his hair, then walks backwards to the door, pointing at Vier with both hands and grinning. “You know I will.”

Vier watches him leave, smiling only until the door is shut. He can’t go back to claiming what he’d just been trying to claim, because his heart is still racing from Tangmo’s breath on his ear. And if he thinks too hard about _that_ , he’ll remember the way Tangmo flops onto Vier’s bed to do his homework, thigh against thigh, grinning up at Vier like he’s something good. He’ll be forced to think about how Tangmo touches Vier purposefully, playfully, like Vier is worth touching. Even though he knows Vier better than anyone, and so should know better. Something shivers through him, and surely that, too, is just a bodily reaction, not an emotional one. 

Vier’s rabbit heartbeat feels hollow, echoing inside an empty ribcage. He checks his watch. 

He hasn’t worked anything out. If anything, he’s more confused than he was before. But he doesn’t want to keep Sean waiting any longer. There’s something about the sweetly authoritative way Sean speaks to him that just makes it easy for Vier to want to listen. If nothing else, it is nice to secretly actually want to do what he’s told, he thinks, instead of fighting to make himself have to pretend. 

~~~~~

Sean comes to the door quickly when Vier knocks. “I thought you were going to forget,” he says, looking up at Vier through the curl of his bangs. 

“No.” Vier’s mouth is stupid. Slow. Can’t think of anything more to say than that. “I wouldn’t.”

“Well,” says Sean, “now I don't have to chase you down with scissors. Come sit.”

Vier steps through the doorway, where Sean stops him with a hand to his chest. 

“First things first,” he says, and pulls Vier’s hands up by the wrists to inspect his bandages.

Vier feels like it should bother him for his junior to be making such a fuss over him, but it doesn’t. He kept his bandages clean because he wants Sean to see, and to be pleased. Sean makes a small, approving sound and drops them again, then steps aside to let Vier in. ` 

There is a chair with a towel draped over the back of it, and Vier is thankful for the specific, direct task. He sits, accomplishing it, and looks around, taking the room in. He’s not been in here before. Sean’s half of the room is strung in lights, with a collage of fashion magazine cutouts taped to the wall. Plants crowd the windowsill, and books and papers are strewn across his desk. He’s not sure what he expected--of course he wouldn’t have the same trim, pastel aesthetic as Rose did. Sean is a different person. It hits Vier like relief, and he smiles. He had just been so ready to find some new reason to feel guilty, some sign that his attraction was fucked up, that he was only drawn to Sean because of some lingering connection with Rose. But of course they’re different. He looks over at Sean and the difference becomes even more stark. Rose had always been polite with him. Intense, yes, but she never looked at him the way Sean does now, leaning against his desk, arms crossed and staring Vier down, uninterested in hiding the hunger in his eyes. 

It should be a relief to shake his guilt. It should feel good to absolve himself of committing some crime against Sean for wanting him for the wrong reason. But it doesn’t, because that fear, along with the weird feeling of staticy nothingness when he tries to pin down his feelings for Sean, was the only thing holding him back. That static feeling is still there, but if Vier ignores it, and only looks at where Sean’s lip is bitten in his teeth, it fades a little. 

Vier wants it gone. So for once, he does not look away or pretend not to see. “Do you know what you’re doing?” he asks, hoping that Sean understands he’s not just talking about his skills as a barber.

“Of course.” Sean bends to Vier’s eye level and runs his fingers through his hair. “I’m very good.”

Vier nods, his mouth is dry. 

“Be still.” 

Vier is still.

Vier is _very_ still as Sean combs up a section and makes the first snip. \

Sean is quiet, concentrating. He tests the length with his fingers, and his eyebrows pull together in distaste. He tilts Vier’s chin with one finger, makes a few more cuts, and measures again. His expression relaxes only a little. Their eyes meet and it softens more. Vier doesn’t look away. He is used to being stared at. He doesn’t always like it, but he’s at least used to the experience of scrutiny. But now it almost feels like Sean is looking _into_ him. Is this how it had been all this time? When Vier was pretending he didn’t notice Sean looking at him, was it like this? And, fuck, could other people see it, too?

Sean’s eyes flick to Vier’s mouth, and Vier feels frozen in place. Sean shifts nearer, stops, then speaks in a close, quiet voice. “I’m going to use the clippers for the back, okay? Not too short.”

Vier nods, dizzy. Sean straightens up and walks behind him. Vier hears the clippers turn on and feels the five points of Sean’s fingers as they press against the back of his head and push it down. He closes his eyes.

He keeps them closed as Sean works. When he’s done, he brushes the stray hairs off Vier’s neck, and walks back around to snip a few more times at the front. Vier feels the cool metal of the scissors brush against his cheek, and he’s suddenly acutely aware of the blood vessels in his ears, and of the pulse in his neck. Red and loud and held in only by a thin layer of skin.

Sean’s hands are methodical and firm as they run product through his hair, setting the coif into place. He doesn’t let them linger on Vier, but he doesn’t shy away from the touch, either. 

“Okay.”

Vier opens his eyes and looks at his reflection in Sean’s desk vanity as Sean takes the towel from around his shoulders and brushes off the remaining few stray hairs. He looks good. Sean is standing behind him, a hand on each shoulder. This is as far as the script for the evening had gone, no matter how much he felt like more might be implied. He feels like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff.

“So are you ready?”

Vier can see the fear in his own reflection, and knows Sean can too, but he can’t stop his face. He’d thought Sean would just go for it, not ask first.

Sean smirks, like a cat proud of himself for knocking a cup off the table. “For the competition, I mean.”

Oh.

Sean walks back around to lean back against his desk again, and Vier juts his chin up at him, as confidently as he can manage. Of course he’s ready.

“What will you wish for, then?” Sean is staring him down like he knows exactly what he’s doing. “What is it you want.”

Frustration and desire and fear all roil through Vier in equal measure, and he stands up. Sean _knows_ him. He knows him and he is real with him and he still likes him and he’s doing all this to him on purpose. Vier is only a handful of centimeters taller than Sean, but he puts them to use, stepping up to crowd him. Sean’s smirk falters.

 _What is it you want_ echoes in Vier’s brain, and the collar of Sean’s t-shirt has slid to expose a collarbone, and Vier wants _that_ , and somehow he still feels fucking nothing about it. He wants to. He remembers what it’s supposed to feel like, liking someone, and he knows there is more to it than abject desire swirling around a yawning void. 

Sean’s chest rises and falls. His knuckles are white where he braces himself against the desk. Vier’s feet are at the edge of the black hole and he thinks that maybe the only way around it is through. So he leans in and kisses him, and Sean makes a soft, broken sound and kisses back. 

Sean hoists himself immediately up to sit on the desk, and Vier steps closer and tilts his face up to meet him. His heart feels ugly with ineffable want, but when Sean pulls Vier’s head back with a fist in his hair, he doesn’t have to think about it.

If he can just keep kissing him instead, pulling against the sharp sting in his scalp where Sean twists his hand to hold his head still by his hair, maybe that will work. Maybe, he thinks as he runs his palms up Sean’s thighs, pain singing through his still-fresh wounds, he can lose himself inside the feeling enough to actually feel it. He bites Sean a little so Sean will bite him back harder, but it doesn’t work; his heart still feels numb, like there’s still some part of him he’s not accessing. He knows he’s gone far beyond accepting he’s into another guy by this point, so it can’t be that. The kiss deepens, and Vier knows that something in him is broken, after what he wished for. He doesn’t know how to fix it. He tries to bury it, to bury himself in Sean, kiss after frantic kiss. 

Vier doesn’t realize he’s crying until he tastes salt in his mouth. Sean must taste it too, because he pulls back to look at him, brows drawn together in worry. Vier’s cheeks are streaked with tears. He hadn’t felt them coming. He blinks, confused. 

“I know I’m not that bad at kissing, P’Vier,” says Sean.

Vier laughs, which just makes it feel worse. Sean knows him well enough to be able disarm him like that, and Vier still can’t call up the feeling he knows is supposed to be there. “No,” he says, resting his forehead bashfully on Sean’s shoulder, “it’s definitely not that.”

“Is it.” Sean pauses, and the new tremble in his voice makes Vier pick his head back up to look at him. He’s pursing his kiss-bitten lips, trying to hold in something Vier can’t parse. “Do you wish I was her?”

“No!” Vier shakes his head, taking Sean’s hands in his. “No, I don’t want to be with her anymore at all, I promise. I don’t even…” he struggles, not sure how to word how he feels about either of them without giving too much away. 

Sean shakes free of Vier’s hands, pulling his arms to his chest. His expression, so wide and vulnerable just a moment ago, shutters closed.

Something Vier said must have been wrong, but he can’t think how. He can’t think at all, now. He doesn’t understand how he got here, but all of a sudden he feels itchy, like the cut hairs he knows Sean brushed away were still pricking the back of his neck. Oh, god, Vier fucked up. He shouldn’t have done this. Shouldn’t have tried to test his feelings out on someone who’d done nothing wrong but simply like him. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you, I don’t mean to…” he trails off. He looks at Sean, but he can’t read his face. It’s gone back to the polite, steady gaze he gives everyone. Wretchedly, Vier makes himself continue, “I think I should go. Thank you for the haircut.”

Sean doesn’t move to stop him, so Vier dips his head in goodbye and backs up, almost tripping over the chair. He is almost to the door by the time Sean finally speaks. His voice is calm, and it stops Vier in his tracks, as always. “We’re still playing basketball, as soon as your hands heal. You promised to teach me. Don’t forget, P’Vier.”

Sean phrases it like a command, but there’s a hint of question in his tone. He’s smiling, a little sly, like he’d always done when he was pretending he wasn’t flirting. Vier doesn’t understand anything, but maybe it doesn’t have to be complicated. Maybe they can go back to that act, and be fine. Vier nods, relieved. This is the part he is practiced at. 

“Of course I won’t forget,” he says.

Sean’s shoulders shift slightly when Vier speaks, letting loose some hidden tension. Vier smiles at him. It’s not all lost. He’s not sure how, exactly, but he’ll take it. He waves goodbye, and as he turns to shut the door, he catches a glimpse in the mirror of Sean reaching up to touch his lips.

Vier takes a breath, pretends he doesn’t notice, and shuts the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Marina's "Numb," which is a Vier song, thanks.
> 
> On twitter @syzyg3tic if you want to talk about GMA.


End file.
